PHP Developers get a New Bridge to .NET

The toolkit is to allow developers to connect to and take advantage of services built using ADO .NET Data Services

Microsoft’s Interoperability Strategy Team released an open-source toolkit for PHP developers who want to use Microsoft’s ADO.Net Data Services (codename “Astoria”).

The toolkit was funded by Microsoft and developed by Persistent Systems. The goal of the toolkit is to allow developers to connect to and take advantage of services built using ADO .NET Data Services, which are part of the larger .Net Framework. It is available under a BSD license.

Microsoft already suppots ADO.Net Data Services in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and will be supporting it next year with Visual Studio 2010, as well.

The new PHP toolkit is one of 25 or so projects being developed and/or funded by Microsoft’s Interoperability Strategy team. The team, which consists of between 100 and 130 developers, is charged with supplementing Microsoft product teams with technologies that will make Microsoft products more interoperable with those from other vendors.